Herein you’ll find articles on a very wide variety of topics about technology in the consumer space (mostly) and items of personal interest to me. I have also participated in and created several podcasts most notably Pragmatic and Causality and all of my podcasts can be found at The Engineered Network.
When we only do what we know without thinking, We send things to hell quicker...
As I get older, I’m becoming a greater believer in power of the differences of opinion. When we’re stuck doing things a certain way, we tend to stay doing them the same way. In a business parlance, you can think about this as being the evolution of a corporate culture. Of course, that can be a good thing, and a bad thing. I suppose it depends on the business you’re in and the direction you’re heading.
Recently, Hewlett Packard (HP) made the surprise announcement that they were intending to spin off their Personal Systems Group, dump their brand new tablet and smartphone hardware, and ultimately will start sacking the WebOS developers {as reported by AllThingsD} they’d just acquired about a year previously from Palm. The acquisition of Autonomy at the cost of $10 billion USD was all part of Leo’s plan to turn HP into an enterprise software solutions company - like the one he left prior to coming to HP: SAP.
The market, to put it bluntly, didn’t like the new direction of the company and HPs stock lost 20% of its value in the first 24 hours after the announcement in August. Since then, it has lost 45%of its value from before the announcement.
In response, the HP board decided to take action. Two days ago, HP sacked Leo Apotheker, and replaced him with Meg Whitman as CEO.
It seems like a television soap box drama almost or at the very least a lesson to be heeded by budding executives out there. But what is the lesson? What went wrong?
Leo Apotheker had been involved with SAP or its subsidiaries from 1995 to 2010: about 15 years. The ultimate set of products that SAP create are all about enterprise management: databases, time sheets, goods tracking, cost tracking, and all the glue that goes into making a modern corporation work. As a product I have had some personal experience with, it’s really not that great and frankly looking a bit long in the tooth: but I digress. What happens when you work in an environment for a significant period of time, as I have seen in past employees I’ve hired in my line of work, is that they bring the corporate culture of their old company to your company when you hire them. Again, this can be good and bad.
When HP brought Leo on board the first thing he wanted to do was to shake things up and make some more money for HP. The best way of doing that was to take HPs existing, albeit small, enterprise business segments and start to push them in a similar direction to SAP - after all that’s what he did before with some reasonable success. To be honest - that’s fair enough when you look at it in isolation. It falls apart when it comes to perception: the greater community have known HP for many years as fine makers (usually) of everything from calculators to printers and more recently to personal computers and smartphones. The shareholders hear that the Leo is going to sell-off the very group that has the highest market visibility and market will react very negatively. HP could have had their cake and ate it as well - provided they had enough money to keep the PSG running in the meantime - by acquiring Autonomy in the background and beginning their push into that market more vigourously. It may have been there wasn’t enough money to pay for both options: in which case I would have said build up to it instead of acquiring. If the PSG was losing a lot of money, then far better to try and fix it than to axe it entirely.
To me I see it simply as Leo not anticipating the market backlash being to sudden and so intense. There are always other options and it seems to me that Leo simply went with a strategy that he was used to, rather than trying to rethink what HP was and how he could play HP to its own strengths. If all HP could do to succeed (according to Leo) was to buy another companies technology and products for a huge sum of money, then the final product isn’t HPs strength by definition. Was it such a good idea then or would Leo have been happier just going to work at Autonomy instead?
So where’s the lesson? It always comes back to core business and HPs core business is what made it successful. HP built a reputable brand and branching out takes patience and determination - not shock acquisitions and announcements of new directions for established companies. Fundamentally though, many peoples thinking is flawed. Just because a certain way of doing things worked before in another situation, doesn’t mean it will work well in the current situation. Understanding the subtleties that make each situation unique comes with experience - but only with a wide and varied experience. A lot of experience inside one silo just tends to make it worse. The more you work within one set of rules the more you believe the way you work is the only and best way. If we only do what we know without thinking about it first, all we do is send things to hell just that little bit quicker.
What happened to HP is a tragedy to me. Perhaps an unnecessary one too. But then, if you hire someone that’s lived inside another companies silo for 15 years and give them the reins, why didn’t you think this would happen? Maybe they’d been the directors of HP for too long? Maybe they thought HP needed a shake up? Wanted or not, they got one.
Microsoft Still, Don't, Get it...
Today at Microsofts Build event, they released a special build version of Windows 8 - the next version of their operating system and an attempt an unifying their new Windows Phone 7 platform with their existing desktop OS. Capable of running both types of apps they are touting it as the best of both. To showcase it, Samsung have provided an Intel Core i5 based tablet, complete with a cooling fan and heat vent to keep the desktop class CPU from melting. Apple took a different approach with the iPhone and iPad and forked their OSX into iOS and pushed developers down the road of manual memory management and efficient program design. Instead of trying to run desktop applications that require more serious horsepower they trimmed back the features and focussed on the basics. This allowed them to use energy efficient components and release products with phenomenal battery performance and speed many years ahead of their competitors. There is no doubt that faster and more energy efficient mobile CPUs are around the corner, and that more serious desktop applications will be able to run on faster hardware. Eventually Apples competitors will be able to match the iOS devices on price and performance using more traditional desktop software thinking. In the meantime however, people will continue to choose Apples products and Apple will be well ahead onto the next big thing, and laughing all the way to the bank. Apple made the hard choices that Microsoft wouldn’t. It shows that they are determined to keep thinking like their product is a desktop PC and that, so far as the mobile tablet space goes, Microsoft still don’t get it.
Their Surprise Doesn't Surprise Me...Anti-viral Companies
The Anti-virus ‘specialists’ at McAfee every quarter release a “Threat Report” that details all the Malware and Viruses that have been detected/present worldwide for the previous few months and then go on to describe points of interest, trends and items they think we all should watch for.
Of particular interest for Mac users is the following quote: “…fake anti-virus software…continues to show consistent growth and has…begun to climb aboard a new platform: the Mac,” in reference to the MacDefender trojan horse virus that recently caused Apple users some minor irritation.
It goes on: “…fake-AV for Apple’s platform is now a reality. This does not surprise us at McAfee Labs,” so yes indeed, their surprise doesn’t surprise me. All operating systems are susceptible to Trojan horse viruses if software can be installed on them from any source, trusted or otherwise. All the malware author needs to do is trick the end user to entering their administrator password and they’re in.
They continue: “It will be interesting to see if this type of malware makes its way to the iPhone and iPad as well. It is probably a case of “when” rather than “if.”” This is where I draw the line and call them ignorant.
The simple problem is that all software that can be installed on stock-standard (read not jailbroken) iOS devices is via the App Store. If the App Store program is tested extremely thoroughly, then the only way to install malicious software on the iOS device is via the App Store and Apple check every application that is put on the store. If one is released and slips through the safety net then Apple will flip their “kill switch” and delete the application the first moment it connects to the internet. There will be no chance for it to steal anything, retransmit anything or spread itself. There is NO WAY for software to be installed by the user from Safari or any other application other than the App Store.
The other item of note is that OSX Lion is being locked down gradually to the same fate as iOS. Eventually OSX will be locked down and all applications will only be able to be installed via the Mac App Store. This will ensure the same circle of protection for Apples desktop OS. In fact, it will be the only popular desktop operating system with this as a feature - making it essentially malware proof or at least the most highly resistant to malware in the market.
The only way into the operating system then, is by a software vulnerability. Even then, each application is sandboxed such that it can’t take over control of the device, but only its own sandbox. With OSX heading the same way, there is precious little such an exploit could accomplish.
McAfee and anti-viral companies like them must be very frustrated with Apple. They will get no significant business from Mac/iOS users.
Then again, maybe they’ll be surprised to hear that…
The Best Device For The Job
There was a time, not that long ago, when Blackberry ruled the smartphone game. They built their system on the Enterprise - with high data compression and excellent business email features. It suited the carriers and big businesses perfectly. The BlackBerry devices are still today excellent devices for getting work done (as in email, calendar and contacts) because they can the do the job very well.
Into the market in 2007 comes Apple. They have a somewhat limited email client but their touch interface and web browser are best in class. People enjoy using the iPhone - despite the fact it is a sub-standard email experience. They can use it to get the job done but it’s not an enterprise device. As the years pass RIM add more features to their phones and a touch screen but their experience remains sub-par compared to the iPhone. That said, their email remained the best in the industry. The iPhone evolved further and more features and syncing made the iPhone Exchange compliant, with threaded messaging and many other good email, calendar and contacts features. Given a choice, all but the more serious email users would now take the iPhone over the BlackBerry.
Without trying to displace RIM and the BlackBerry directly, without taking the Microsoft approach with Netscape (copy every feature and offer a competing product for free) Apple have succeeded in taking market share away from RIM - despite the fact the BlackBerry provides more email features than the iPhone Mail client.
How did Apple do this?
They made the iPhone the product that more people enjoy using to get the job done. Just because a product can do the job, doesn’t make it the product people will buy.